Most-watched soccer games on US TV for May 7-13, 2018

Santos Laguna knocked out Club América in the 2018 Clasura semifinal on Sunday before an audience of 2.167 million on Univision and Univision Deportes, the most for a Liguilla match so far in 2018 and the second largest audience for a Liga MX match in 2018 behind only the Super Clásico in March. Both legs of the semifinal averaged 1.82 million viewers while the other semifinal between Club Tijuana and Toluca averaged 572,000 viewers on Univision Deportes.

FC Dallas’ match against Los Angeles Galaxy drew 395,000 viewers to Univision and Univision Deportes, bringing Univision’s average viewership to 305,500 through the first 10 broadcasts of the season, up significantly from 261,800 and 246,300 average viewers for the first 10 broadcasts in 2016 and 2017.

Borussia Dortmund’s final match of the 2017-18 Bundesliga season was watched by 329,000 viewers on the FOX broadcast network, the second largest audience for a Bundesliga match this season behind March 31’s game between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich which was also broadcast on FOX to 352,000 people.

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Alex MichalakosMay 18, 2018

There must be a mistake in these figures–the MLS numbers are higher than the Premier League cable numbers (even without the Deportes’ added). Please check and revise these to make the Premier League figures higher than MLS.

Haha. Some of the Premier League games this past Sunday had greater viewing numbers than MLS even when there were nine other Premier League matches kicking off at the same time (and each one of them was nationally televised).

Note he said MLS CABLE numbers not the NBC Over The Air number the MLS games on cable beat the Premier League games. Not a surprise as alot of MLS games have beaten Premier League games in ratings outside of Over- The- Air

Christopher what where the EPL numbers on Championship Sunday? This year compared to last. I was hoping West Brom would stay up.

Also that’s a solid Bundesliga number on FOX but still is small time for a Over-The-Air game. I just don’t know if FOX keeps the Bundesliga ratings are way below EPL/MLS and FOX pays more for Bundelsiga than it does for MLS. You think Turner will try for Bundesliga. I think that would make for a good podcast with you and Kartik.

FOX’s deal with the Bundesliga is a worldwide deal which runs through May 2020. I would expect FOX to try to renew the deal since they have so few rights left now that they’ve lost the Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup.

What’s your source for how much FOX paid for the Bundesliga TV rights for the US part of the worldwide deal?

Article Titled: Bundesliga to double rights fees with Fox deal. Says “The American and Asian elements of the deal run for five years, starting from the 2015/16 season”
“Daubitzer insists that the deal keeps DFL Sports Enterprises on target to double the annual international rights fees received by the Bundesliga from around €70 million in the current cycle, to nearer €150 million in the next.”

So the Bundesliga deal with FOX doubled their Intl’ rights from 70 mil Euros to 150 which is equivalent to 95 mil US. MLS only receives 30 mil from FOX. So Bundelisga is getting a little over 3x that amount. I imagine FOX thought they’d get EPL numbers with Bundesliga. What can they do to get EPL numbers and can they ever? Its a entertaining league.

Thanks for providing the source. It’s difficult to draw an apples-to-apples comparison between what FOX is paying for the Bundesliga compared to MLS when the numbers quoted in the article are for the international rights, not solely the US rights. But the information is interesting, regardless.

I don’t think anyone at FOX thought that the Bundesliga would get EPL numbers. It’s hard work to get an audience interested in something that was tiny previously when it was on GolTV.

Ok good point I do think its been a money loser even if you split the value of the deal 47 mil a peice from the Asia Market deal and the more valuable US market they over payed. Thanks I will check out that podcast.

I should note the $95 Mil US is what FOX deal added to the deal. All in all Bundesliga total Global rights went from $83 mil US to $177 mil US. Premier League makes just about that much alone $167 mil from their US rights.